


monsters and maidens

by openmouthwideeye



Series: The Imp's Wife [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-27
Updated: 2013-06-27
Packaged: 2017-12-16 08:35:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/860118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openmouthwideeye/pseuds/openmouthwideeye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her first year as the Lady of Casterly Rock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	monsters and maidens

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I very much wanted to write another Jaime installment for this series, but he's bound and determined to make life hard for me. So I scooped this out of my doc folder on a whim and decided to post it. Jaime will show back up one of these days. Please enjoy.

Brienne found contentment in fits and spurts. In prayers before the Mother, who emanated peace as she had not known with the Warrior and the Maiden. In the pleasure of a book of songs Tyrion abandoned after breakfast. In an unexpected turn that revealed the wonders of Casterly Rock, old portraits and dull blades whispering Lannister secrets more clearly than annals ever could.

She and her husband lay together rarely, only when they must. Those first couplings were hard to bear. Tyrion met her as one in a duel, harsh and erratic and unwavering. With the darkness in his mismatched eyes and the half-weight of him atop her, she could not pretend he was any but himself.

It was not his fault if she wished he were.

In half a year she was with child. She wept soundlessly when the maester confirmed her suspicions, and disappeared for half the night to bury her grief with her sword. Both remained in a forgotten passage far below Casterly Rock, and when she told her lord husband he was to have an heir, the half-turn of her lips was not forced.

“Tell me about Jaime,” Tyrion said to her one night, as she nursed Galladon in a small room affixed to their bedchamber.

Their son was strong, more beautiful than he had any right to be. The only hints of his father’s aberration were his mismatched eyes, green and blue. She prayed he had little of her as well.

“He is your brother,” she spoke calmly, belying the sudden quavering of her heart. “You know him better than I.”

She and her husband had spoken of Jaime often during their time in King’s Landing, and it had rarely ended but with tempers running high.

Tyrion did not look angry, though, nor jealous. She might have called his expression curious, had she not known better.

“Once, perhaps,” Tyrion said mildly. “It has been a long time since I called him ‘brother.’”

Brienne frowned.

When Tyrion asked after Galladon’s name, she had nearly invented some tale. She did not want her brother’s shade haunting her son, as he had haunted her through her father’s eyes. But lying was no great skill of hers, and her lord husband deserved to know the boy behind his son’s name. And so she spoke of her brother for the first time since that night on the Quiet Isle.

Tyrion had slipped into his own mind, and they had not discussed it since.

“What would you know?” Brienne asked, as Galladon coughed against her breast and she patted his lungs free.

“The first time-“ Tyrion barely paused as he rethought his question, “-you met.” His mouth turned sardonic. “Where did you meet the famous Jaime Lannister?”

“In the cells of Riverrun,” Brienne said.

Tyrion raised a brow, and Brienne wrestled with her words for a moment.

“Lady Catelyn bid me-“ she took a breath, shook her head. Admitted, “I suppose I helped him escape.”

A wry, surprised grin spread stretched the scar across her lord husband’s face.

“Where I could not,” he murmured.

She thought he looked amused.

Brienne shifted their son in her arms, appraised him. She had forgotten the ill-mounted escape attempts that had relegated Jaime to the dank dungeons of Riverrun.

_A strange kind of honor, these Lannisters have._

 “Your motives were far different than mine,” she said softly.

Tyrion steepled his hands, looking shrewd.

“My wife talks in riddles,” he murmured, studying her. “I confess I cannot fathom what you mean.” He paused, tilting his head when she remained silent. “I believe an explanation is in order?”

Brienne looked down, stroking Galladon’s cheek. Soft and unmarred, relaxed in sleep.

Her son made it easier to speak.

“Well, I – loathed him, for one.”

Tyrion smiled, and there was no mistaking the amusement on his face.

“ _Loathed?_ ” he repeated, prompting.

“I thought him some great monster,” she confessed. She chewed her lip, broken teeth jagged against the soft flesh. It was a long while before she added, “I had yet to encounter true monsters.”

Tyrion cleared his throat, but did not speak.

In the heady air of their son’s nursery, Brienne remembered.

“I nearly drowned him,” she blurted, shame and pride and longing bleeding together. “He frustrated me so, and I had never fought his like, and I –“

_Why am I telling him this?_

But it felt good to remember. Jaime had two hands then, and his cloak was anything but white.

“Do you mean to say you were _winning_?”

For all his halfhearted interest when she sparred with Jaime in the Keep’s western yard, Tyrion sounded truly astonished.

“He was weak and wounded, bound with heavy chains.”

“You _were_ ,” Tyrion noted with relish.

“I was,” she conceded. “But he proved himself when I fought the bear.”

Tyrion’s brows inched toward his hairline.

“Do go on.”

And so their son spent his first year with the shade of his uncle, hearing tales of monsters and of maidens.

**Author's Note:**

> A note: I'm usually not a fan of that whole business where everyone ever in fiction must name their child after a dead relative. But Brienne is, after all, somewhat sentimental, and I think in the situation she'd want an anchor of sorts to her home. So Galladon was (literally) born.
> 
> Feedback, please.


End file.
